Marge vs. the Monorail

When the Environmental Protection Agency fines Mr. Burns $3 million for dumping nuclear waste in a Springfield park, a town meeting is held on how to spend the money. Following a few suggestions—including a proposal from a poorly-disguised Burns to invest the money back into his power plant—Marge nearly succeeds in advocating for the repair of the town's rundown roads, but a fast-talking salesman named Lyle Lanley leads a song-and-dance routine that convinces the townspeople to instead build a monorail. After running a questionable training program, Lanley randomly selects Homer to be the monorail's conductor. Doubtful about Lanley, Marge visits his office and discovers his intention to run off with money skimmed from the project while the townspeople fall victim to a faulty train.

Marge drives to the town of North Haverbrook, a previous purchaser of one of Lanley's monorails. She discovers the town to be in ruins, and, despite advertisements for it everywhere stating otherwise, the townsfolk fearfully deny their monorail's existence. She meets Sebastian Cobb, the engineer who designed Lanley's North Haverbrook monorail, who explains Lanley had embezzled construction funds through shoddy workmanship and materials, confirming that his monorail projects are scams. Cobb offers to help Marge prevent Springfield from suffering the same fate. At the Springfield monorail's inaugural run, Lanley arranges for a well-attended opening ceremony as a diversion while he escapes on a plane heading to Tahiti. When the flight makes an unexpected stopover in North Haverbrook, the townsfolk storm the aircraft to attack Lanley for ruining the town.

Back in Springfield, the monorail leaves the station just before Marge and Cobb arrive and the controls malfunction from Lanley's sabotage, causing the solar-powered train to over-speed around the track, endangering Homer, Bart, and the passengers, including Leonard Nimoy. As Chief Wiggum and Mayor Quimby argue over who takes charge, Marge and Cobb contact Homer by radio and Cobb tells him he will need to find an anchor to stop the train. Improvising quickly, Homer pries loose the metal "M" from the engine's side logo, ties a rope to it, and throws it from the train. After damaging a large portion of the town—especially the already-derelict roads—the "M" catches on the giant donut of the Lard Lad Donut store's sign and the rope holds, stopping the monorail. As the passengers are rescued, Marge narrates that the town never again embarked on such a foolish project, then follows with a list that contradicts her statement including a skyscraper made from Popsicle sticks, a 50 foot-tall magnifying glass, and an up-escalator that leads to nowhere.[2][3][8]

Conan O'Brien conceived the idea when he saw a billboard in Los Angeles that just had the word "Monorail" on it, with no other details or explanation.[9] He first pitched this episode at a story retreat to Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who said the episode was a little crazy and thought he should try some other material first. O'Brien had previously pitched episodes where Lisa had a rival and where Marge gets a job at the power plant and Mr. Burns falls in love with her; both went well. James L. Brooks "absolutely loved" this episode when O'Brien presented it.[10]

Leonard Nimoy was not originally considered for the role as the celebrity at the maiden voyage of the monorail, as the writing staff did not think he would accept, because William Shatner had previously turned the show down. Instead, George Takei was asked to guest star, as he had previously appeared as Akira in the second season episode "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish". After demanding several script changes,[6] Takei declined, saying he did not want to make fun of public transportation as he was a member of the board of directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District (now the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority). As a result, the staff went to Nimoy, who accepted.[10]

The episode borrows some elements from the The Music Man, a musical stage production about a conman, with "The Monorail Song" strongly resembling the show's "Ya Got Trouble" and Lyle Lanley being based on the play's character Harold Hill.[1]

The episode starts with a tribute song to The Flintstones as Homer heads home from work and crashes his car into a chestnut tree.[1] The music that plays as Smithers takes the barrel of toxic waste is a spoof of the "Axl F" theme from Beverly Hills Cop. Later, Leonard Nimoy makes a guest appearance as himself. References are made to his role in Star Trek: The Original Series, and an allusion to his role as the host of In Search of.... Kyle Darren, the caricature of Luke Perry, star of Beverly Hills, 90210, appears as well.[11] Mayor Quimby uses the phrase "May the Force be with you" from the Star Wars franchise, confusing it with Nimoy's work on Star Trek (and—at the same time—believing Nimoy to have been "one of The Little Rascals").[12] Homer's Monorail conductor uniform is based on uniforms from Star Wars.[13] When Mr. Burns is brought into the court room, he is restrained in the same way as Hannibal Lecter in the film The Silence of the Lambs.[1] Homer briefly serenades Marge in their bedroom with a line from the folk tune "The Riddle Song".[14] The logo on the monorail cars which is revealed as Homer attempts to stop the speeding train shows they were first used during the 1964 World's Fair, though that event's train actually used cars suspended from an overhead rail.[15]

In its original American broadcast, "Marge vs. the Monorail" finished 30th in the ratings for the week of January 11 to 17, 1993, with a Nielsen rating of 13.7.[16] The episode was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week.[16]

"Marge vs. the Monorail" has frequently been selected in lists of the show's best episodes. In 1998, TV Guide listed it in its list of top twelve Simpsons episodes.[17] In 2003, Entertainment Weekly released a list of its Top 25 episodes, ranking this episode in fourth, saying "the episode has arguably the highest throwaway-gag-per-minute ratio of any Simpsons, and all of them are laugh-out-loud funny."[18] In his book Planet Simpson, Chris Turner named the episode as being one of his five favorites.[19] In 2006, IGN named the episode the best of the fourth season.[20] John Ortved of Vanity Fair called it the third best episode of the show, due to, "An amazing musical number; Leonard Nimoy in a random guest appearance... Besides being replete with excellent jokes, this episode reveals the town's mob mentality and its collective lack of reason. This is the episode that defines Springfield more than any other."[21] In 2010, Michael Moran of The Times ranked the episode as the ninth best in the show's history.[22] In 2019, Entertainment.ie named it among the 10 greatest Simpsons episodes of all time.[23] Later that same year, The Guardian named it one of the five greatest episodes in Simpsons history,[24] Time ranked the episode first in its list of 10 best Simpsons episodes picked by Simpsons experts,[25] and Consequence of Sound ranked it the number two episode on its list of top 30 Simpsons episodes.[26]

The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "an unsurpassed episode. It's hard to know where to start dishing out the praise — Leonard Nimoy's guest appearance, the Monorail song, Marge's narration, the truck full of popcorn..."[1] Robert Canning of IGN strongly praised the episode, stating "It is by far one of the most loved episodes of The Simpsons and can safely be called a classic by any fan. From beginning to end, there's joke after joke after hilarious joke. There's nothing in this half-hour that doesn't work, and no matter how many times I watch this episode, it never, ever gets old."[27] Emily VanDerWerff of Slant Magazine named it the show's best episode, stating "It's the one you think of when you think of a Simpsons episode", and is "maybe the show's funniest, and it most perfectly encapsulates what may be the show's overriding theme: People are really stupid and self-serving, but if you give them long enough, they'll eventually bumble toward the right answer."[28] In 2012, "Marge vs. the Monorail" was the second-place finisher in a Splitsider reader poll to decide on the best episode of any television sitcom, losing to the Community episode "Remedial Chaos Theory".[29]

Leonard Nimoy's appearance as himself has been praised as being one of the show's best guest appearances.[6] In a list of the 25 greatest guest voices on the show, released September 5, 2006, IGN.com ranked Leonard Nimoy at 11th.[30] Nathan Ditum ranked his performance as the 13th best guest appearance in the show's history.[31] Nimoy made a second guest appearance in season eight's "The Springfield Files".[30]

Conan O'Brien has said that of all the episodes of The Simpsons he wrote, this is his favorite.[5] Homer's lines "I call the big one Bitey" and "Donuts, is there anything they can't do?" are among series creator Matt Groening's favorite lines.[32] O'Brien and Hank Azaria performed the monorail song live at the Hollywood Bowl from September 12–14, 2014 as part of the show "The Simpsons Take The Bowl".[33] When The Simpsons began streaming on Disney+ in 2019, former Simpsons writer and executive producer Bill Oakley named the episode as one of the best classic Simpsons episodes to watch on the service.[34]

The television show Supernatural references "Marge vs. the Monorail" in the episode "Something Wicked" when Sam Winchester says that places attacked by the monster included Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, all towns mentioned in the song Lyle Lanley uses to persuade Springfield to purchase a monorail.[35]

Conversely, the episode was not initially well received by many fans of the show's earlier seasons, as it was a particularly absurd early example of the show taking a more joke-based cartoon approach to comedy, rather than the more realistic situational style of comedy it had employed in its first few years. In 1995, during the production of the seventh season, Yeardley Smith said of the episode as "truly one of our worst – we [the entire cast] all agree".[7]

• 58th Primetime Emmy Awards, where episode writer Conan O'Brien performed a parody of "Ya Got Trouble"
• Public transport

Bibliography

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• "Marge vs. the Monorail" at The Simpsons.com
• "Marge vs. the Monorail episode capsule". The Simpsons Archive.
• "Marge vs. the Monorail" at TV.com
• "Marge vs. the Monorail" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Marge vs. the Monorail" at BBC.co.uk